A grieving Steven R. Woods slumps forward, sobbing inconsolably. He hugs to his chest a folded American flag that moments earlier had covered the casket in front of him. He is in a place that few of us will ever know.

In 1964 his father — Army Staff Sgt. Lawrence Woods — was shot down during a resupply mission near Bu Prang, Vietnam. It took nearly 50 years to find his remains. On March 21 this year those remains were buried during his funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery.

Three rifle volleys were fired to honor Woods and seven other young men killed during the mission. As Woods' son accepted the folded flag, a U.S. Air Force band played. And then clutching that flag and a framed picture of his father, the younger Woods buried the father he virtually never had.

Steven Woods likely will never fully bury the pain and grief of losing his father. He was 7 years old the last time he saw his father — old enough to have early memories of his father, young enough to need him for decades to come.

Gone was the man whose heroic work should have taken place not only in war but also under the roof of a home. Steven Woods lost the father and mentor he was just coming to know. He lost the man who would teach him how to field ground balls. How to play basketball on the driveway or schoolyard court. How to catch and gut a fish. How to respect the girls he would be drawn to. How to respect the men he would grow up with as peers or bosses. He lost the most important man in his life, the one whose love mattered.

When they are fortunate enough to grow up with fathers who care, boys learn hundreds of lessons from them on the paths to becoming men. When to hold the cards life gives you, and when to fold them and start over. The lessons are endless, taught in ways that are visible and invisible. About girls, God, sex, manhood, authority, power, accountability.

Army Staff Sgt. Lawrence Woods had a daughter, Lisa, as well. If he had the years to be as heroic in fatherhood as he was in his military service, he would have been the first man to reflect back to his daughter her beauty, her lovability, her worthiness. Through his simple acts of attention and affection he would have helped his daughter internalize the lifelong beliefs, "I am attractive. I am interesting. I am worthy.Men are my equal. I don't need their approval. I belong with them."

He would have been there for her when she had problems with romantic relationships, when she was asked to a dance for the first time, when she had her heart broken. He would have been there during the drama and fury of adolescence. He would have been there to share the burden of disciplining his daughter and son.

Steven Woods and his sister Lisa lost holiday celebrations and birthdays with their father. They lost a part of themselves that they never became because their father was gone, unable to help sculpt that part of their hearts and souls.

The photo of Steven Woods at his father's funeral cuts to the core. The raw enormity of that loss and grief is reflected in the anguish on his face. His anguish tells far more than the statistics—that 24 million American children live without their biological fathers. That growing up without a father significantly increases one's chances of committing suicide or ending up incarcerated. Increased rates of poverty, mental illness, violence, dropping out of school, drug abuse and more are related to growing up without a father.

Mass culture almost trivializes fatherhood. It doesn't confer status on those who dedicate their lives to it. It doesn't translate into promotions at work. In fact fathers who insist on living balanced lives with their kids often fall behind co-workers who abandon their families to 70-hour workweeks.

There are still 1,642 Vietnam War veterans who remain unaccounted for. Those casualties didn't end in Southeast Asia. Nor are they ending in Syria, Iraq, throughout Africa and everywhere else in the world where men are dying by the thousands, filling the prisons, or simply walking away from the sons and daughters they brought into existence.

Father's Day is a day to remember Lawrence Woods, and the ordinary, decent men who do their best when no one has prepared them for the extraordinary demands of fatherhood. It is a day to honor the heroism of fathers who are now single parents, trying to do the impossible task of being both a father and a mother.

It's also a day to honor the daughters who grow up to be single mothers, far too often called upon to fill the shoes left empty by the men who chose to leave or who were taken too early.